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anti-evolution argument

Posted on: March 29, 2008 - 11:24pm

Rev0lver

Posts: 171

Joined: 2007-02-24

Offline

anti-evolution argument

So I was discussing evolution with a creationist on another forum, I brought up the likes of a. afarensis and the early forms of the homo genus, and he came back with 1. All early homonid or Lucy-like fossils have been discredited and 2. Why have we found such a vast amount of full dinosaur skeletons but we have not found more than a couple nearly-complete "early human" fossils?

I'm having trouble thinking of a response to this to be honest. Anybody have any input?

2. Why have we found such a vast amount of full dinosaur skeletons but we have not found more than a couple nearly-complete "early human" fossils?

Because "dinosaur" means a lot of different things. That's like asking why there are more bird skeletons on the earth than there are raccoon skeletons.

It's rare to find any fossil that is completely whole. Most things that die disappear forever. Fossilized remains are more or less "accidents" of nature, because they require certain felicitous geological conditions to last so long.

The "full" dinosaur skeletons seen in museums tend to be artificial. Real fossils are too rare and valuable. To have an ACTUAL fossil exhibit come to your museum (e.g. Lucy) is a pretty big deal. They treat the actual finds as if you they would disintegrate if you looked at them from the wrong angle.

If you were to compare the number of fossils we've found of our own ancestors to a smaller group, say the relatives of the tiger, then you would have a more even playing field. He's forcing you to compare the general to the specific, which is dishonest.

(Go figure).

A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.

Oh, he linked you to "Answers in Genesis"---an apologetics site. You can expect a lot of honesty THERE. *yank yank*

What tends to happen is the creationist cites examples of fossils that WERE later proven to be mistakes or confused with something else, and then they conclude that ALL fossil evidence is wrong and therefore ALL evolution is completely wrong.

Whether or not Lucy actually walked upright has nothing to do with whether she was related to us.

One of creationisms most ridiculous ideas is that all of the evidence for evolution comes from excavated fossils.

Survey says no.

A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.

Conclusion: (1)There is no fossil evidence that man is the product of evolution. (2)The missing links are still missing because they simply do not exist. (3)The Bible clearly states, “then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7).

LALALALALLALALALALALALALALALALALA!!!!!!!!!!

1. I won't admit any evidence you have as evidence

2. I will misrepresent what your theory purports to explain and again disregard any evidence to the contrary(ie missing links).

According to modern evolutionary theory, all populations of organisms are in transition. Therefore, a "transitional form" is a human construct of a selected form that vividly represents a particular evolutionary stage, as recognized in hindsight. Contemporary "transitional" forms may be called "living fossils", but on a cladogram representing the historical divergences of life-forms, a "transitional fossil" will represent an organism at the point where indivual lineages (clades) diverge.

3. I will allude to a book, supposedly containing the inspired word of God, that has no evidence or proof, but a mere single statement(out of a few conflicting statements in the same book) of how God created man as the definitive version of human existence.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda

Anybody willing to help me out on this one? I am no scientist, I have no idea about mtDNA at all.

What claptrap. This person clings to the information of frauds.

Ok, now it is true that if you compare the DNA of the entire human race to one small tribe of chimps then us Homo sapiens are remarkably similar. However, this in no way points to us not being evolved from an ape-like ancestor. The main reason that our brains became so large is multifaceted. We grew larger brains for social interaction, greater dexterity, but most importantly to survive a very precarious ordeal that nearly wiped us out completely.

Africa used to be covered with lush rainforests from shoreline to shoreline. That is until the pesky island-continent of India crashed into southern asia. This started all kinds of regional changes in Africa. As India continues to push into Asia it is pushing up the Himalayas and the tibetian plateau. This created a change of weather patterns that severly depleted the rainfall that the African continent received. Also the tibetian plains actually act like a giant CO2 scrubber that sucks up the CO2 out of our atmosphere. This caused the Earth to cool in bursts. Slowly the continent changed from rainforest to open grassland. This is when our ancestors split from the chimps and started to evolve into us. Now as the Himalayas continued to get taller and taller things started to get really bad for our ancestors. Major drought and famine. They were stuck in eastern Africa around current day Ethiopia. Things got so bad that it is estimated that we were reduced to less than 10,000 members in total. Only the most intelligent survived. Then they spread throughout the world and dominated it. So we are getting more populous where the other apes are going in the other direction. Hence why they have much more genetic diversity than we do. Smack this guy for being an idiot.

Quote:

Paleontological discoveries and geochronology show that the pattern of morphological change in the hominid fossil record was not progressive, but abrupt

Although the 3.2 million year old fossil "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis), was said to be bipedal, her 2.6 million year old descendent, Australopithecus africanus, was indisputably arboreal.

"indisputably"? What? Nothing, absolutely nothing is indisputable with any fossil. And definetly not human fossils. Evolutionary biologists fight like cats and dogs over every tiny detail.

Ok, I'm browsing over several things in this report because it's utter nonsense. If they want to bring up a specific point just let me know and I'll take a look.

Quote:

"The deleterious mutation rate appears to be so high in humans and our close relatives that it is doubtful that such species, which have low reproductive rates, could survive if mutational effects on fitness were to combine in a multiplicative way."

The authors had to rely upon a rare association of mutations, termed synergistic epistasis to explain why the numerous hypothesized deleterious mutations have not overwhelmed our genome.

Holy fucking shit, my brain is starting to ooze out my ears.

By definition the deleterious mutations won't be passed on naturally. *slaps hand on face* These guys really don't fucking understand how it works. To show an example that even an ID proponent can understand, genetic mutation is like batting with a blindfold on. You just swing blindly at the ball. Most of the time you miss and it goes no where. You're out. However every so often you knock the shit out of the ball and you move on in evolution. The bad mutations do not get passed on and it dies, the good mutations do get passed on.

Of course in human society we care for our sickly people. This is great for temporary problems and a boon for survival of our species. For life-long problems our current method of caring for the infirm is definitely not kosher compared to natural evolution. This will cause a great die-off among a portion of our species if civilization collapses. But so what? It won't wipe us out. Just thin out our numbers a tad. You can't compare human deleterious mutations that we overcome in society with natural selection. Currently we are resisting that to an extent. How idiotic to compare humans living in society to an animal living in the wild.

Quote:

In the late 1980's and early 1990's a number of studies were done examining the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of women all over the world. These studies, nicknamed the "Eve theory," suggested that the last common ancestor of modern man (actually women) appeared within the last 200,000 years (12-15), much more recently than previously thought. Refinements in the measurements lowered the original estimates to 135,000 years (15) and finally 100,000 years (16). Scientists chose to examine mtDNA because, being enclosed within the subcellular organelle called the mitochondrion, there is no genetic recombination (males make no contribution of mtDNA to the fetus). All mtDNA comes from our mothers and is passed down from mother to daughter, since only mitochondria from the egg are used to make up the fetus. By tracing the differences in mtDNA from peoples around the world, scientists have calculated the probable date of the last common ancestor of modern humans at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Pretty much. Like I was saying above, this is when our ancestors were in eastern africa and we were very few in numbers. Another nitpick. The mtDNA is passed from mother to both sons and daughters.

Quote:

Therefore, the most accurate date for the origin of modern humans indicate that the last common ancestor to modern humans must have existed less than 50,000 years ago.

WTF? Is this guy fucking retarded? Try 7 million years ago. Just because we are all descended from one guys Y chromosome around 100-150 thousand years ago and one gals mtDNA 150-200 thousand years ago doesn't point them out to be humanities common ancestor. They are definetly each one of them, but not the "last common ancestors" to humanity. That completely misses the entire fucking point of the study and human evolution.

I see what these people are doing here, Revolver. They are taking a lot of good, scientific information, regurgitating it to sound like they know something, and then they throw in bald-faced lies. This is really fucking slimy shit, and it chaps my ass.

Quote:

Simultaneous, rapid changes in human abilities suggest replacement of previously existing hominids with modern humans. The fact that all these events happened ~50,000 years ago precludes any possibility that previously existing hominids could be our ancestors, since Homo erectus died out 300,000 years ago, and Homo neandertalensis has been proven to be too genetically different from us to have been our ancestor. Where does this leave the evolutionists and their descent of man theory? Well, they can always fall back on their favorite line - "the fossil record is just incomplete." Alternatively, check out Genesis 1:26.

Reeeeetch! *pushes trashcan away*

*groans* This is shit logic. We evolved most likely from Homo erectus. But just like you don't die off as soon as you have a son, not all erectus evolved into Homo sapiens and then croaked. It looks like some of them evolved into Homo floresiensis as well. Most likely us Homo sapiens and Homo erectus coexisted for a while before they died off. And as far as "the fossil record is just incomplete", who fucking cares? Where the fuck is deludedgod? He'd shit all over this BS. Molecular Biology has confirmed and augmented the theory of evolution. Including our evolution from an ape-like ancestor.

This article babbles a lot of true, scientific data, throws in religious conclusions, and then just dismisses evolution of man based on fucking nothing. It's retarded.

So I was discussing evolution with a creationist on another forum, I brought up the likes of a. afarensis and the early forms of the homo genus, and he came back with 1. All early homonid or Lucy-like fossils have been discredited and 2. Why have we found such a vast amount of full dinosaur skeletons but we have not found more than a couple nearly-complete "early human" fossils? I'm having trouble thinking of a response to this to be honest. Anybody have any input?

For starters dinosauria is an 'order' on the taxonomic scale. Hominids are members of the superfamily Hominoidea. Superfamily is a smaller catagory than order is.Dinosauria contains about 540 known genera and about 700 known species. And that is only what is currently known. It is estimated that there are still 700-900 more dinosaur genera to be discovered. At present there are only about 14 or 15 species of hominid.

That should clear that up.

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."

They nitpick their way thru details on how well the progression of fossils in the geologic column supports evolution theory. They believe the flaws they have found voids all of evolution theory and means their theory, which is supported by fossil progression based solely on how well plants and animals could tread water during a great earth wide flood 4000 years ago, is therefore proven correct.

If you stay with them long enough you will find out their treading water based theory relies on "Super Evolution" which you foolishly thought they were arguing against just the other day.

(Something about the ark not being able to fit the millions of plants and animals required to throw in the water at exactly the right time so they could evolve and breed while treading water, die and fill the geologic column in exactly the correct order. Or something like that. Search Kind vs. species, for the details, my brain hurts just thinking about it.)

And you believe you can reason with these people? Based on what, their demostrated, critical thinking skills?